Ad-driven social media platforms are willing to tolerate monumental volumes of abusive users. They’ve discovered the same thing the Mainstream Media did: negative emotions grip people’s attention harder than positive ones. Hate and fear drives engagement, and engagement drives ad impressions.

#Mastodon is not an ad-driven platform. There is absolutely zero incentives to let awful people run amok in the name of engagement.

@malwaretech@infosec.exchange

My microcosmic validation of this is my wife asking 2-3 times in the past month if I’m aware of [something negative driving engagement] and my response has been ‘Nope, I don’t see anyone sharing that on the #Fediverse.’

I still use #BigMammoth (thx to @jensorensen@mastodon.social for that 😆) to keep up on politics daily so I’m aware of what’s going on. But the lack of an #algorithm or clear profit motive means the Negativity du Jour™ isn’t pushed to the forefront for everybody and comes to attention naturally if it has staying power.

https://escapingtech.com/tech/opinions/i-was-wrong-about-mastodon-moderation.html